


shelter from the storm

by CosmicTurnabout



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Descent into Madness, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fantasizing, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Porn With Plot, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:21:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25168378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CosmicTurnabout/pseuds/CosmicTurnabout
Summary: The good hunter, injured and wandering, comes across Alfred, who nurses her back to health. Or something like it.Rating and tags for later chapters.
Relationships: Alfred/The Hunter (Bloodborne)
Comments: 32
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter 1

She is near delirious with pain when she finds him again.

Rain falls in sheets over the Cathedral Ward, turning buildings and beasts alike into fuzzy, warped shapes. Victoria doesn’t pass many of the latter as she stumbles her way down uneven cobblestone streets and alleys, gods be blessed. She’s looking for shelter, something better than a rotting wooden overhang or a hollowed-out house, and she has a vague idea of what to search for. So much of the city has been destroyed, gnawed at by years of the beastly scourge. Her back throbs like a second heartbeat. At this point, she’s not sure she could fight off a beast if it did attack her. Most of the ones she sees are lumps huddled under blankets, with shining red eyes that watch her blearily as she limps by. Perhaps they too are injured. Perhaps they too, like the people indoors, have stopped caring. Beyond depressing to think about. She shivers, and pain jolts her stride. She labors on, blood oozing down, down even into her smallclothes.

After what feels like hours, she comes across the building she seeks. A largish church in a corner of the Cathedral Ward—on its western side, she thinks—with the jagged spires and decorative buttresses typical of Yharnam architecture. She’d been here before, once, several years ago, when it was a proper church, with sermons and candles and people with clasped hands waiting their turn for healing. It is abandoned now. Most churches are.

In the rain Victoria cannot make out any details of the facade, but she knows the sculptures in high relief between the doors are robed figures with sinuous arms reaching for the heavens. She approaches and pushes against one of the dark wooden doors. It opens easily for her. Walking into the narthex, she passes more robed statues squatting against the walls, facing inward. They, like the building, like the sculptures in relief, are green-stained, emaciated, clamoring for the sky.

She sighs upon leaving the heaviness of the deluge behind, and revels in the sudden silence of the church. Rain drips down her face, falls from her clothing to tap loudly onto the floor. She swipes wet hair out of her eyes and takes a look around. Smeared gray light filters in through a large round window at the apex of the nave, giving the air a dead, muted quality. Mist seems to be leaking in from somewhere out of sight; it swirls around her ankles with each step. She knows she should be on her guard for beasts and not-quite-beasts in this open indoor space—with only two wooden doors for a barrier—but the pain is throbbing through her whole body, and she’s freezing, and she can’t bring herself to focus.

She walks further down the nave, chasing the warmth of the interior, looking up. Anything to take her mind off the pain, and the wet, and the cold. Ornate ribbed vaulting fills her view, crisscrossing into infinity, receding up and up until it is swallowed by the ceiling’s gaping black maw. She thinks of what little she knows of the Healing Church’s teachings, and all that really sticks out is the importance of communion and the miraculous power of blood healing. And yet she has heard rumors of church officials and their grand efforts to transcend the essence of mortality, dabbling in the arcane, taking terrifying risks for knowledge. Only rumors, mind, and she likes to pretend they have nothing to do with her work, with what she does. 

The vaulting really is beautiful, as are the statues interspersed throughout, standing guard at the many fluted columns. All decoration, all meant to glorify the Healing Church. No one who grows up in Yharnam doubts the power of blood—both its healing and corrupting qualities—and as a hunter, she has a grim sense where that will lead in the end. But she lies to herself, as most hunters do that see their comrades fall to the scourge. Everyone starts connecting the dots eventually. But what can be done, now that the path has been taken? Maybe their efforts are like this vaulted ceiling. Human knowledge arcing and grasping at stars until an inevitable recession into blackness.

She realizes all of a sudden that she can smell the faintest hint of smoke. Her teeth clench involuntarily. Damned wound has her senses slowed in all the wrong ways. Has her bloody daydreaming! She whips her head around, and spies candles lit in the alcoves of both aisles, even up along the triforium a floor above. Someone is here—has been here—and recently at that. 

“Hello?” comes a kindly voice from somewhere to her right. She spins to pinpoint it, gripping the handle of her cane, and she winces as the ragged wound down her back gives an awful twinge. A tall figure has appeared between two statues along the right aisle, in the columned murkiness past the nave. The gray light from the windows casts the figure in dull blue, flares in his flaxen hair. She knows this man.

“Alfred?”

“Victoria? Is that you? I do have the right name, yes?” His voice is clear, strangely crisp, incongruous against these surroundings. She’d always thought it a bit strange. “Apologies; I have worked with a goodly number of hunters recently. What brings you here? Seeking shelter from the rain, I presume?” He steps forward, and in the light from the rose window he sees her clearly and jerks to a stop, alarm twisting his expression. Embroidery shines bright on his puffy sleeves. How is he so clean? “By the good blood, you’re hurt. Come, come! Lean on me.” Before she can do anything, he closes the distance between them and wraps an arm around her shoulders. He smells like soap and incense, and she can feel the weight of his muscle even through the billowing blue cloth of his robes. He does not seem to mind that she’s sopping wet. “Heavens, but you’ve bled nearly through your clothes.”

“You don’t have to—“ Doesn’t have to what? She needs help, even she can admit that. “I’m not—“ she tries again, but she’d be a fool to say she isn’t hurt too terribly badly. She can feel the blood soaking her back, sticking her undergarments fast to her skin.

Alfred shushes her and guides her down a corridor off the aisle. Victoria lets him. The Cathedral Ward is a sprawling labyrinth, and to meet a hunter she knows is quite the coincidence. She feels the force of his hands on her, gentler now, tamed, but kin to the same force that had served him so well in their fight against that horrific monster in the burned-out church in Old Yharnam. She’d met him right before braving the place, kneeling in prayer before a bloodstained altar. Despite his joviality she’d thought his eyes somewhat feverish then, and in the flickering light of the corridor’s bronze stand-lamps, she sees some of that fever still there, the ghost of something hot and shadowed and waiting. She’s in too much pain to be truly wary of him.

“What happened?” Alfred whispers. “I thought you very capable, when we fought together.” But for the click of their bootheels on the vaulted stone, the corridor would be completely silent. Not even the pounding rain can be heard overhead.

“It was a great hulking beast”, Victoria says, her foot catching on a crack in the floor, and Alfred grips harder, which keeps her from tumbling flat on her face. She grunts in thanks. “What else? Crossed paths with it on a bridge in Central Yharnam. You know the one. Crumbling thing, littered with coaches. I was getting my blunderbuss repaired at an old workshop at the time, and I’d thought my cane match enough for it.” She shakes her head. She’s not used to talking this much, but the talking keeps her mouth moving, and moving will likely keep her from fainting. “I was wrong. Without the gun, I couldn’t force an opening, and as I was dancing about, the blackguard slashed me across the back.” _I suppose I need a new gun now._ _Gods_. “I collapsed right there. I thought for sure I was dead, but someone must have killed the beast, or scared it off, and dragged me to safety afterward. They must not have had time to patch me up, but they gave me an infusion of blood.” She thumps her side. “I knew by the bruise on my hip. Gave me enough energy to make my way here.” She remembers suddenly that she did not dream when she fell, as she sometimes does, and she frowns. _No use ruminating over that now_. 

Alfred nods—with some degree of pity, she thinks, and his voice turns soothing, catching her frown, perhaps, and thinking it caused by pain. “How harrowing. I am sorry you have suffered so, but it is good, I suppose, to know that people are still aiding their own in these troubled times. I’ve suffered similar wounds, and I know a thing or two about stitching up. Let us see what I can do for you, myself.” 

Victoria has no inkling how far down the corridor they’ve gone, but they’ve halted in front of a stretch of several rooms, each with an iron-strapped door and a rusted pull ring. Alfred opens the first one on their left, and they both step into a small rectangular space, the walls here darker than those of the church proper. A small brazier gives some light, though, washing the interior of the room in yellow. A cot sits flush against one wall, with a plumped pillow and a fuzzy woolen blanket over lightly stained sheets. An old wooden table occupies the room’s center, accompanied by two chairs, with a bookshelf and desk rounding out the furnishings. In the farthest corner, near what looks like a narrow hallway, there is a pile of metal and cloth that can only be Alfred’s belongings. She sees the haft of his Kirkhammer and the butt of his rifle jutting up, like twin flags of victory on a multicolored hill.

“I came here a few years ago, but I’ve never been down these corridors. All these rooms. I had no idea. I’m surprised there’s furniture here at all.” 

She can feel Alfred nod against her shoulder, and she looks up at him. “It seems hunters have used this church as a stopover for some time, each of them bringing more and more furniture and knickknacks, filling it up. There’s more in the other rooms you haven’t seen.” He shrugs. His Adam’s apple bobs jauntily as he speaks. “And currently it is my... base of operations, I suppose you could call it. It is a surprisingly good refuge. I barely ever see beasts around the place, and it’s dry and warm in here once you get a fire going.”

Victoria sniffs. With no fireplace in the room, she’s not sure how that’s possible. But his words remind her how cold and wet she is, and she’s suddenly exhausted. She squirms out of his grasp like a wraith. “Can I...” She totters across the room and sags heavily onto the cot, caring not if she sullies the sheets. She hadn’t noticed until she’d stopped walking, but her energy has nearly left her. Despite her best efforts and Alfred’s support, she really is close to fainting now. Her back is like a yawning canyon of pain threatening to split her down the middle, open her up. Alfred looks worried, his lips drawn down into furrows. Worry looks wrong, somehow, on his face. Too tender. Too soft. He speaks quickly then, all in a rush.

“Right, right. Do lie down if you please. You shan’t be a bother. I’ve some medical supplies in the next room. There is also some blood ministration equipment, of course. I’ll not be a moment.”

He turns to go, and just before he passes out of sight there’s a flash in his eyes, red against white, like a beast catching a hint of blood in the air. She’s too tired to think on it, though, and she falls back against the cot, tired as the dead. 


	2. Chapter 2

Victoria wakes, and her first thought is that she’s had no dreams. Again. She doesn’t know whether to call that good omen or bad. The hunt might not be on in earnest, but the dreams were always... helpful. Comforting, even, in their way. There was an old man, and a doll, and damp, solid earth.

Her second thought is that her back is not shrieking pain any longer. That alone gets her to sit up suddenly, eyes wide. The room is darker now, and it takes her a moment or two for her sight to acclimate. Alfred is sitting at the desk, reading by a small pool of candlelight, and he straightens upon hearing the bed creak, snapping his book shut.

“Victoria! How do you feel?” He pushes the chair back, gets up. “I’m afraid I had to, erm, remove some of your clothing to get those bandages around you properly. I do apologize for that, but I suspect you would have bled out had I tarried much longer.” He’s meeting her eyes insistently, as if he dare not look elsewhere. Why is that?

Victoria looks down to see that her torso has been neatly wrapped in gauze; but for that, she’s bare to the waist. Ah. She frowns and reaches behind her, scrabbling weakly at her back. She is dry, and the bandages cover the wound completely. It still burns slightly to the touch, and it throbs as she twists, but she can now move without wanting to scream. That alone is more than worth Alfred’s invading her privacy, such as it was. She gives a polite cough, and crosses one arm over her chest.

“No, no. Thank you. I understand. I’m sure... you...” What can she say? That she doesn’t suspect him of any unbecoming behavior, of taking advantage of her in this state? Is that really necessary? They are both of them hunters. They both take risks; they both must trust others against their instincts. “That is, you very likely saved my life.”

Alfred nods, relieved. “Yes. Well, I did what anyone else would do. I must add, however, that while I did wash and clean the wound, it is going to need a deeper soak when the time comes to change your bandages.”

She perks up at that. Something else occurs to her. “Wait. Did you... did you manage to stitch me up as well? How, while I was asleep?”

“Oh, that! As I said, there are all manner of medical supplies here, including a veritable trove of numbing vapors. They are quite good at dulling pain, at least when it is localized to a particular part of the body.”

Victoria cannot suppress a shiver. She appreciates having access to some form of anesthesia, of course, but the tools some of the church doctors use... best not to wonder where they come from, or what sorts of strange ingredients they employ in their concoctions. Thinking about it too long is almost enough to put a woman off hunting for good. Almost. But how did Alfred come to learn so much about medicine? She shakes her head. _Best not to wonder! Follow your own advice._

“Thank you,” she says again. “Truly. Did you get a chance to sleep?”

“Oh, no,” he says, too cheerful by half. “But then, I’m used to working on little sleep. Must keep the mind sharp, you know.”

“Well, please do get some rest when you can. Oh! Unless...” It has just occurred to her that she currently occupies the bed Alfred must have been using since coming here. “Shall I move to another room, or to a cot?”

“Dear Victoria!” he gasps, sounding scandalized, palms facing her in pacifying fashion. “How barbaric would I be to suggest you move from this bed in your state? There are other beds I can use. There is no need for you to fret over me, I assure you.”

“If you say so,” she says, uncertainty creeping into her voice, but he’s already at her bedside, tucking the blanket back around her.

“Now, now. I do say so. I also say you could use another few hours of sleep, no matter how fresh you feel.” He sweeps a lock of disheveled hair out of her face and behind her ear. “May the good blood guide your dreams.”

Her cheeks heat slightly at his touch, and she nods absently, deciding he’s right. “Yes. But you rest too, Alfred. You rest too.” The words drift out of her mouth like a sigh. She is more tired than she thought. She snuggles back down against the mattress, and the second her head hits the pillow, she sinks into the soft cradle of sleep.

—

This time, Victoria dreams. She’s in the same place as always. Standing on the cobblestone path lined with white flowers, between small hills covered in grave markers. The Hunter’s Dream. She thinks someone told her that name once, a long time ago, maybe when she first came here, but she’s starting to forget, her memory fraying at the edges. The woman in doll’s clothes—is she really a doll? that’s what the old man said, but she can’t bring herself to believe it—leans against the stone wall leading up to the workshop. Upon seeing her appear there— _do I just materialize out of thin air? what does it look like?_ —the doll-woman straightens and bows.

“Good hunter. Welcome back.”

Victoria nods to her. Here, she only speaks when she has to. She goes about her business in the dream under the doll-woman’s watchful gaze, checking the usual places. The old man is absent today. Not in the workshop, not in the copse down the side path. Small pale figures peek up from hollowed-out stumps, bony fingers grasping at the air. Some of them look at her as she walks by. She remembers the time she came upon Gehrman, sleeping in his wheelchair. He had been facing the cloudy expanse that extended beyond the dream’s solid ground, and he had been murmuring to himself. He had sounded sad, she thought, almost like he might begin crying. It had intrigued her. Grass and twigs crunch under her boots, just like they did in the memory, but he had not woken up.

She makes her way to the other side of the garden, and pulls on the iron gate to no avail. Still locked. It has been locked ever since she first came here. Maybe that is where Gehrman rests when he’s not in the workshop or the copse, but she’s not sure she’ll ever find out. Sometimes she thinks she sees shades walking down the paths, through the iron bars and into the sealed garden beyond, feels them passing through her. Sometimes she thinks she’ll die before she sees what lies past the iron fence, in the field where grass bends in the wind. _Do the dead come here too? Can they? Will there be a time I won’t dream of this place ever again?_

In Old Yharnam, there had been a madman on the clock tower, one who turned his guns on those who came to hunt the city’s beasts. Djura, his name was. Victoria had been no exception. She’d had to dodge through ruined buildings across a craggy, cracked landscape to make it out alive. Just barely. That had been the last time she’d come here. Even with Alfred’s help, she’d been wounded after killing that beast in the old church. She’d never been hurt quite as badly as by that beast on the bridge, though. Such a horrid creature, that thing. 

“Give some thought to the hunt, and its purpose,” Djura had said from on high, his voice echoing across the dead city. She stands stock still, hands clutching the iron bars. She thinks of the beasts she killed on her way to the Church of the Good Chalice. She was only defending herself. They attacked her. She had only been passing through. They had been moaning and howling in the church, lifting their voices to a bloody, crucified beast, huge and hairy and long-limbed.

Almost as if in prayer. She shivers.

_Still, I would have ignored them if they had not attacked me. I’m no monster, whatever that half-crazed pacifist says. I’m no monster._

She presses her face against the bars until they make indentations in her skin. The last thing she remembers is looking up to see the moon limned in a red like dried blood.


	3. Chapter 3

She wakes to the smell of bread, of all things. 

Her eyes adjust to the light in the room more quickly this time; candles lit on the desk and table help. She is more refreshed than normal, as she always is when she wakes from the dream. 

There are new objects in the room. A scuffed-up stretcher connected by long thin tubes to a stand with a blood bag. The tubes look like slack veins. 

And...

“Good evening,” says Alfred cheerily from near the table. He indicates a copper bathtub standing next to the stretcher against the wall. “I’ve brought the tub here, so you need not walk far.” It is age-worn, and somewhat stained, but its feet are carved into what looks like a leopard’s paws, and there is intricate giltwork on the faucet and knobs “Feeling a bit more rested now, I hope? I will start a fire to heat the bath water for you, then. I did some preliminary cleaning when I bandaged you up, but you are going to have to wash that wound if you don’t want it to fester.” 

“If you say so,” she says, cracking her jaw with a yawn. At first she did not quite feel like moving, but now that she considers it, she is not opposed to a nice hot bath, not at all. He’s being so helpful, and besides, what else can she do? “As long as you don’t mind me being a bit slow about it.”

“Of course not!” He gestures grandly, as if to bid her stand up, take in her surroundings at her leisure. 

Slipping her robe over her shoulders, she moves to sit on the edge of the bed. Before she even has a chance to stand, she turns her gaze to the plate of bread that had greeted her upon waking. The loaf steams on the table only a few feet away, and her stomach rumbles at the sight. 

“Do you mind if I...” she says sheepishly, nodding at the bread.

Alfred beams. “By all means! I am glad to see your appetite back.” He lifts a pail at his feet, then starts for the door. “Tuck in. I will soon have the water prepared for your bath.” He leaves the room, presumably to go heat water to fill the tub. However he plans to do that, she does not know. She has never heard of a church with a stove or heating apparatus in the very building where services take place. Then again, this church has its fair share of surprising accoutrements. Perhaps some healing church doctors had lived here once, ministering and studying and going about their dreary business so long they’d eventually decided to make a home of the place. She supposes there is some kind of logic in that. 

Victoria stretches her legs, then totters to the table and sits down in one of the rickety chairs. This close, she can tell how warm the bread is, and that surprises her; are they near to a bakery? How had Alfred managed to procure such fresh food? At the moment she does not care. She reaches for a knife, cuts a small slice, and bolts it down. There is a sweetness to it—there are raisins studded throughout! It seems she has never tasted anything so delicious in her whole life. When had she last eaten? She cannot recall. There is spiced wine in a pitcher on the side table as well, and she pours a generous helping into a hammered silver goblet she finds in one of the cupboards. The wine is warm and invigorating, and her throat tingles as she swallows. 

By the time Alfred returns with the first pailful of hot water, Victoria has polished off the bread and nearly a third of the wine in the pitcher. There is a pleasant buzz in her head now, and the smallest smile tugging at her lips. 

“Oho! Your appetite truly has returned in full force.” His eyes crinkle further as he notes her smile. “And you have sampled the wine as well.” 

“I have, at that,” she says, waving him off. “It was all but beckoning to me. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Certainly not. In this place, what is mine is yours.” He shrugs, his face open and inviting. “Hunters must stick together, no?” 

“Yes. Of course we must.” She considers asking how he came across the bread, but stops herself; for some reason, she’s afraid to know the answer. 

“Where did you heat the water?” she asks instead. 

“There is a stove here constructed for just that purpose,” he says. Victoria nods. So she was right. She is struck for a moment with the image of healing church priests taking long soaks, candles burning incense, smoke lying hazy over the hot water. To think of them doing something so... normal seems almost blasphemous somehow. She blinks, suppressing a laugh. Her temples give a twinge. It has been a while since she last drank. 

“By your leave,” says Alfred, and he returns to the task of lugging hot water from down the corridor to the copper tub. Victoria leans further back in the wooden chair, watching him work. It is a sobering experience in more ways than one. He is quick and powerful, lumbering but precise; a force of nature that seems to displace space rather than move through it. He is wearing his usual billowy blue robes, but his shirt hangs open underneath, and she catches just a hint of muscled chest each time he stoops to empty the pail into the tub. Her eyes widen. She is not sure why she focuses on him so. It has been some time since she has been this close to a man, in so intimate a setting. 

In fact...

_Ages since I last spoke at length with a man_ , she realizes. Outside of the hunt, anyhow. _And he is so gentle, so firm and strong in his convictions. Admirable_. 

Oh. Admirable indeed. Firm and strong and dark, shaggy blonde hair falling across his eyes as he leans down to empty the bucket, flash of too-white teeth as he asks her once again if she’s comfortable. That it won’t take much longer to fill the tub. She nods at him, trying not to look distracted as his robes shift, and she catches the curl of hair at the top of his chest once more. 

It is only the most fleeting of sights, and yet... something coils warm between her legs, thrums in her loins. She squeezes her thighs together. 

_How long since I have...? Come to think on it, how long since Alfred...? I wonder_. A myriad of images assault her at once. It excites her, to imagine him ravaging her, pushing her against the room’s cold stone wall and filling her up. Using her to relieve the tension of long days and nights on the hunt. Oh, to be used! To not have to worry about killing beasts or staying alive ever again! To exist as a thing to be acted upon, an item to be exhausted and then stored away on a shelf forever and ever. 

It is a tantalizing mental tour. _Maybe he’s only helping me so he can fuck me later_ , she thinks, and it gives her a sick little thrill, _maybe he’s hoping I’ll fuck him out of gratitude for saving my life_. The thrill turns sicker, guiltier, until it’s not sick or guilty at all. It’s simple thrill only, a pure white flood through her veins, lighting up her fingers and toes and the tips of her ears. _Who knows? Maybe I will fuck him, grateful or not._

Then she shakes her head, cutting a swath through the strange cloud of lust. What is she thinking? She cannot allow herself such luxuries. Such decadence. This is how you get killed on the hunt. Alfred is helping her because he wishes to, because he is a good person—that is all, not because he has any ulterior motive in mind. She continues to watch him work, because that is all he is doing. Working. Helping her. 

Some time later, when the tub is filled, Alfred insists on stripping the bandages from her back. A reasonable enough request, and easy to grant. She nods and stands up straight, all the better for him to remove the gauze, but she is abruptly, painfully aware that the robe looped over her arms is the only thing concealing her breasts. 

_What if I exposed myself_? she thinks of a sudden. _What would he do? Would it really be so bad? He’s seen me partially undressed before_. She feels his fingers on her, tapping strong and sure against her spine, unwinding the gauze with the precision of a man working a loom. She wonders how those fingers would feel on her face, her neck, her breasts—

There’s that lusty haze again. Animalistic. Primitive. She puts a halt on those thoughts as best she can. Closes her eyes. Breathes in deep through her nose. Opens her eyes again. Alfred is a hunter as well. Surely he has had women, plenty of them, but he has no interest in her, of course. Not so soon after the hunt. They need time to rest, both of them, before they can think of anything but recovering. 

_But man is not driven only to survive_ , she thinks at a thousand miles an hour, _man was made to laugh from his belly and savor delicious food and breathe in the cool morning air and_ fuck _like—_

“Alfred, am I comely?” she finds herself asking in a soft voice. _Stupid! Why would you say such a thing_? But she rocks forward, hand to cheek. Her inner voice, her animal voice, takes hold. _I have to know. I have to know_. 

Victoria feels Alfred stop, the last of the bandages falling lax against her. He bundles them away, then she hears a whisper of cloth and the tapping of bootheels as he walks around to face her. 

“Now what kind of silly question is that?” he says. His voice is soft too, and his eyes gleam, looking almost red in the low light. He places the bandages on the ground, then reaches for the side table and pulls something from its drawer. “See for yourself.” 

He is holding a small silver hand mirror. Encircling it is an engraving of fat little angles with ugly faces and long tentacled arms. Who would have made such a thing? It does not seem like something healing church doctors would keep. Is it a joke piece, perhaps? Or something worse? She looks at her reflection. 

A thin-faced woman looks back. She is pale, hair long and scraggly, some of it swept across her forehead in a sorry excuse for bangs. She turns her head this way and that, inspecting. She supposes there is some fragile beauty in those big eyes, in the puckering of her pink lips. The robe has fallen away now, she sees, looping low as her shoulders sag; her upper torso is bared to him. Just as she’d feared. Wanted? It does not even occur to her to cross her arms now. Her breasts are small, with dark brown nipples, and they seem to droop even as she arches her back. She feels strange. 

“You see?” he says. There is a musical lilt to his voice that sends a shiver right down her spine, right down to her cunt. “You _are_ beautiful.”

“I don’t feel it.” 

“Nonsense. Even your name is beautiful. Victoria,” he hums it aloud. “Oh-hoh, yes. A name as lovely as the woman who bears it. And an auspicious name as well.” He smiles at her over the mirror, teeth bared like a wolf’s. She finds herself vaguely frightened, even as her cunt clenches hot at his words. “It carries ‘victory’ within.” 

Victoria snorts, and suddenly the whole situation is very funny, not strange and heavy and rousing as it had been seconds before. “Alright, alright. You’ve convinced me. Put that thing away.” Alfred hovers a touch longer than propriety might allow, but then he chuckles and returns the mirror to its drawer. She sighs, stretches. She feels somewhat normal again. 

“Well, in you pop,” says Alfred. In an easy tone, like a nursemaid going about her daily tasks, which Victoria finds passing absurd. “A bath will do you a great deal of good. Trust me on that.” He nods to himself. “Yes. I will give you some privacy; I’ve some wash to attend to in one of the other rooms. But please don’t hesitate to call if you need anything.” And he takes his leave, boots clicking smartly on stone, then echoing softer and softer with distance. He is the tap of his boots, the cloying smell of soap, the blue mass of robes and force she’d fought with side-by-side on the hunt. When he’s gone, the room feels truly empty. 

But giving her privacy had been his prerogative. Alfred’s presence is a comfort, to be sure, but now that she’s here with the water steaming before her, she realizes how much she’s been wanting this. Back stripped of bandages, robe undone and settled over the rim, she is free to enjoy the bath at her leisure. She slips out of her smallclothes and steps in, slides down into the tub proper. The heat is like a slap in the face at first, and then it melts into a warm, loving embrace. She sinks until her hair rests on the water’s surface, stringy and tangled like clumps of seaweed. She closes her eyes and inhales almost instinctively, lets the heat envelop her. She wraps her hands around her knees. She steeps in it. Lives in it. 

It really does feel wonderful, like the heat is scouring away all the blood and pain and terror of the last few days. She soaks for a few moments longer before her back protests, and then she remembers that—oh yes, she must clean the wound. Alfred would fret if she didn’t. Nursemaid Alfred. She giggles to herself, then sets to the business of washing in earnest. She picks up a cake of yellow soap from a small metal ledge in the tub’s side—Alfred has left her everything she needs, seems—and rubs it between her hands until suds coat her arms and scuttle across the water’s surface. Leaning against the tub is a long brush with a battered wooden handle, and she takes it up, soaps the bristles, and leans over to scrub her back. 

Victoria is careful when going over the ragged wound. It burns still, but not as much as before—those medicines really must have done the trick. The brush traces a crooked path along her skin, a snaking faultine ending in a nasty little lake. That was where the beast had ripped its claw out, she suspects, catching a flap of her with it. She had fainted not long after, certain she was naught but fresh meat for the beast at that point. Someone had saved her, though, changed her story. Fancy that. Saved her so that she could make her wobbly way here, to be cared for by Alfred. And that was good, wasn’t it? That was certainly good. It would be good to get back to the hunt eventually. And regaining her strength is paramount. She moves the brush, and soap and water run off the wound’s puckered scab, sloughing small flakes of dead skin. They float on the surface of the water with her hair, tiny stained shards of her, and they disappear in a swirl as soon as she shifts. 

Back washed, she scrunches the soap into her hair, then dips her head under the water to rinse it out. The hot heavy water closes in on her, makes her feel like she’s died—or rather, that she hasn’t been born yet, and that the world has started over, waiting for her to act. Waiting for her to make different choices. Or the same ones. To hunt or not to hunt? That is why she is here, is it not? She works the soap through and out of her hair, eyes closed against the pressing heat, and all the primal thoughts from before come flooding back. The damp earth, the dream empty as an open grave. Alfred fucking her over the bed, making little _unh, unh_ sounds with each thrust. The blood of a beast in her mouth, flowing down her back, mixing with her own. Djura’s words. The desire to hunt, to kill, to breed. To live. 

When she comes up for air, it’s cool and dark. The candles on the table and desk have gone out, but torches in the hallway flicker frantic light into the room. Her hair drags against her neck and back, lying heavy on the water. No click of bootheels, no smell of foreign soap, no smiling cloud of blue. Alfred is still putting his wash away. The mundane thought almost makes her want to smile, but she does not. She sits for a few moments longer before deciding it is finally time. She is clean enough. 

She stands, and water sluices off of her black as pitch, rushing to rejoin the bath sucking at her legs. The tub feels dirty now that she’s poured her thoughts and desires into it. She yearns to be out. Stepping carefully over the lip of the tub, she pads over to grab a towel hanging in the corner, roughs it through her hair, then rubs it down her body. When she is sufficiently dry, she puts her smallclothes back on and pulls the robe tight around her waist. She plops down on the edge of the bed, feeling almost like she might enjoy sleeping another spell. Her skin is as fresh as the day she was born, but... but...

Her eyes are drawn unbidden to the stretcher next to the tub, with its blood bag stand and slack-vein tubes. In the bath she had almost forgotten it was there, but in the not-quite-dark of the room it is suddenly larger, looming like a wraith, strange and oblong. Had Alfred really laid her on that stretcher to administer blood and medicine only a few hours before? She shivers, clutches at one arm. She can’t feel or see a bruise where he had inserted the needle, but it’s possible he did it carefully enough to avoid her noticing. It would be so like him. Alfred the nursemaid, gentle and strong. 

But she finds she does not want to think overlong about how Alfred knows so much about blood ministration and church medicine. She does not want to think about his smell, his breezy laugh, the waiting red in his eyes. Thinking about him at all seems to stir unsightly feelings in her, seems to poke and prod at her guts. And yet she can’t help herself. She can’t stop, because they are alike. 

_We are monsters, both of us_ , a voice seems to whisper from the vicinity of the stretcher. Victoria nods toward it, agreeing. _I may be clean, but I look a monster_ , she thinks, _a great white creature from the deep, with a chasm yawning on my back. And a mind as fierce and furious as a beast on the hunt. Monsters can only coexist with others of their kind. Damn him, but Djura might have been right_. 

After sitting for a moment with that burr of a thought, Victoria lets the robe drop around her shoulders. Then around her elbows. Best leave it open. Alfred will need to reapply the bandages when he returns. 


	4. Chapter 4

Several days pass.

At least Victoria thinks it has been several days. She does not go outside; she tracks the passage of time through the thick foggy windows of the church. There are more windows here than she expected, those at the apse and down the nave, of course, and several spanning the long corridors that loop around the building and its outer units. She suspects she still has not seem them all.

This particular morning there is no rain. The clouds have cleared, allowing smudges of red and yellow to tinge the sky. The sun has come out, visible as it has not been in months. Warm light filters through the windowpanes, through cracks in the walls.

Her back is healing, slowly but surely. Alfred’s practiced hand changes her bandages and administers the necessary medication. There has been less and less need for the numbing vapors, which she is glad for, and she has only had to go through one more blood transfusion since she arrived. She feels almost as spry and mobile as she had been before the attack.

The extra energy spurs her to movement. After washing she takes the time to walk about the church, padding from room to room, looking in corners and around tables and inside dusty vases with spiderwebs across their mouths. She counts the windows she passes; this time, she finds four new windows that look out on secret little gardens with their own man-made ponds. She is content to gaze out at them, imagining what they might look like in full bloom. Quite a surprise, these miniature outdoor spaces--to think the stuffy old church fathers had built them! She supposes they must have been human after all, those pontificating fools, with their finery and their pretty words. But the greatest surprise today is the well-stocked library at the very western edge of the building. She spends several hours there leafing through heavy tomes on every subject imaginable, from anatomy to alchemy to esoteric speculation on the arcane. A history of Cainhurst’s nobility sits on a table in the middle of the room, accompanied by a melted-down candle. When Victoria approaches, she sees the book has been cracked open to a spindly list of names and genealogies. Several names have been crossed out, the ink on the slashes freshly raven-black. She can’t make heads or tails of it, so she returns to perusing the shelves, and eventually loses herself in a romance until her stomach starts to rumble.

As dreamlike as the days feel, there is an almost mechanical precision to the routine of waking, eating, washing, and bedding down for the night. It gives Victoria some stability, something firm to cling to. A clock strikes midday somewhere down the hall, and she and Alfred sit at table, tin plates bearing bread and cheese and jerky and even some dried fruit. There is not much in the way of fine silverware in the mass of abandoned belongings the church has accumulated, but this does not bother Victoria. Hers was a life of modest means; a story told hundreds of times before. Her father had died in a hunt a decade past, and her mother had devoted herself fully to caring for her younger brothers. She subsisted off a meager plot of land, managing to sell just enough to keep the house while still putting food on the table.

When she was old enough, Victoria had gone off to hunt in her father’s place. She could make good gold slaying beasts, serving as an escort, and—what appealed to her most—directly protect her family and neighbors besides. Victoria found lodging in Yharnam proper, and took to mailing her bounties to her mother and brothers. She visited when time allowed, but letters were their main means of communication. The boys were growing tall and strong, her mother wrote, and they were able to do most of the harder work necessary to tend the fields and manage the house. Victoria, in turn, did her part as a hunter. She grew to enjoy the role, to see it as integral to her identity. It filled her with a vitality of spirit unimaginable to her when she had been studying to become a scholar. Dusty tomes were as nothing to the scent of blood and the rush of adrenaline that came with the hunt. What else could she possibly want out of life? The years passed, the hunts dragged on, and Victoria found less and less reason to visit the tiny house she had grown up in. Eventually she stopped returning to see her family altogether.

Somewhere inside she feels that should make her sadder than it had. The hunt had burnt a lot of the old feeling out of her soul, replaced it with something scabbed and rock-hard. It had kept her alive, certainly, but it had also heralded a lurking new entity, an entity whose twin she had seen in Alfred.

It frightens her, but she cannot say she hates it.

Alfred says a short prayer over the food, and they both tuck in. The cheese is mushy, leaving yellow dust on Victoria’s fingers. It tastes sharp and bright on her tongue, perhaps a bit too sharp. The bread is tough, the wine too watered down, and yet she can’t bring herself to care. She’s had to resort to soups of roots and bark and lean strips of meat for far too long. She relishes what Alfred manages to round up.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you. Where do you get all this?” She gestures to the spread on the table.

Alfred smiles. “This is hardly a cornucopia, but there are some few shops and grocers nearby, and as the hunt ended a week or so ago, they are doing a fair amount of business with all the people coming back. Still, it will take months for everything to return to normal.”

“But... the bread you set out for me the day I got here was so fresh. You would think the hunt had never happened at all.”

“Fresh?” Alfred looks at her curiously, goblet poised halfway to his mouth. “The bread you ate that day was as tough and cold as the loaves before you now.” She blanches, and his expression suddenly turns pitying. “Oh, fret not, my dear. You suffered a dreadful injury. It is to be expected that your mind would be somewhat addled by the experience.”

 _Somewhat_ addled? That was nigh hallucination. “I suppose you’re right,” Victoria allows. She swallows and turns back to the food. Their utensils click in the relative silence, the candlelight flickering when they reach past it for butter. The memory of the bread hot in her hand tickles at her mind. Taunts it. She had held that bread, and it _had_ been hot, damn it all! She chances another look at Alfred. His gaze is focused fully on his plate. Only a small hunk of cheese and a string or two of jerky remains. Victoria’s own plate holds dried fruit and bread. Cold, stale bread. She eyes the food for a moment, then pops a few raisins into her mouth.

Why would he lie? Maybe he had remembered it differently. Maybe he had been the one hallucinating. And what would that mean?

The waiting red in his eyes...

 _Suspecting him of any kind of wrongdoing or delusion is hideous, Victoria. This man saved your life, for the gods’ sake. You were in a great amount of pain, you’d just woken up, you were coming out of a delirium_. She sniffs, picking up the bread and rolling it around between her hands. No warmth; no soft give as she presses. It is as tough as an old shoe. Alfred does not seem to notice, or if he does, decides to make no comment. They spend the rest of the meal in silence.

Once finished with her food, Victoria lies back down in the bed, pulling the blankets around her. Alfred takes his leave, going out into the courtyard to collect some wood for kindling. He had eaten the hunk of bread she left on her plate; she’d had no stomach for it after the meat and cheese.

She falls into fitful sleep for a few hours. When she wakes, she finds her back itching, her legs restless. She does not need more sleep, she realizes—she needs to move, as she had before. She’d had a dream, but it had been frantic, fleeting, telling her what her own brain would not: _it is no good to stay lying in bed_. She has done too much of that lately. She gets up, slips into her robe, and slinks out of the room.

Victoria makes for the back of the church, an area she has not often visited. As she passes a window, she sees that it has begun to rain again. Here, close to a copse of trees, corpses of dead dogs make small mounds on the wet sheet of grey. Corpses of larger things lurk behind the trees too, she knows, but she dares not get close enough to confirm her suspicions. Or to remember. Alfred had said the presence of the church—the incense, the carvings—usually kept the larger beasts away. Well, that was true most of the time, but the brutes had still managed to get bloody close enough to make her shiver.

_But even so, Alfred is here. He will protect me. I need not worry._

With that thought to cheer her, she continues to walk down the winding back corridors, some leading into round windowed rooms, some leading to sheltered balconies. The church is larger than she could ever have imagined from the outside. So many little chambers, storage spaces, nooks and crannies. It would take her months to explore it all.

 _Will I be here that long_? For some reason she does not know when she will leave. The church has become something of a home to her. She finds she has no desire to step foot outside. She smiles contentedly to herself, and keeps walking. _I’ve seen four new windows so far_ , she thinks, and the thrill is chilling. _Yes, there are always new windows to count_.

Victoria’s footsteps echo back to her, lonely and hollow. Eventually she passes a large window at the back of the church. Another new window to add to the list. This corridor leads to the central aisle and the nave. She peers out into a small courtyard, and sees Alfred beating at a huge gray lump on the ground. A beast. Her cheerful mood flashes away like hot water in a pan, heart threatening to climb into her throat.

Realization comes quickly on fear's heels. _Is this why so few beasts plague the church? Is this what he does while I rest?_ It would make sense. Thump, thump, thump goes the Kirkhammer, dampened somewhat by the sound of rain. _Alfred kills them while I am asleep. He hunts when I cannot_. She is somewhat pacified to see that a pile of kindling rests near the scene. Even if he is killing beasts without telling her, he had not lied when he had gone out. At least not this time.

Victoria feels she should walk away, but something keeps her rooted to the spot. Alfred is a warrior made, form hewn from something harder than stone. He looks almost like a statue built to grace the courtyard, only he is in motion. His Kirkhammer pummels the beast—a wolf of some kind—down into the earth, turns its head into a pulpy mess. She watches for several more moments as Alfred pounds the monster into slush, feeling pressure build in her chest, then sink into her stomach. At first she thinks it is fear, or disgust, but no... that pressure spreads down into her legs, washes cold past her thighs. He is covered in blood and sweat, his hair slicked to the side in a bushy tangle. He spits on the ground, a look in his eyes that says he is angry at the world, always has been angry. 

It hits her then, so hard she nearly staggers. He is alive, gloriously alive—and dangerous as the beast he just felled. _My savior_. Victoria slips a hand through her robe and into her smallclothes, teasing at her clit. She rests her other hand on the window ledge, leaning forward for purchase. Alfred tears his cloak off, and just like that he’s bare to the waist, sweat glistening on his neck and back.

Victoria moans, pushing her fingers into her cunt. Her walls pulse around her, offering delicious friction in response. One finger stays pressed to the tiny bud at her opening, stroking harder and harder as she watches Alfred remove the sword from the Kirkhammer sheath. He lets the sheath thud to the ground, gets a good grip on the sword hilt, and begins to hack the dead beast into pieces. First its front legs, one, then the other; then on to its hind legs, stretched out straight and stiff in the red grass. Victoria begins to make circular motions around her clit, heat radiating out from her belly to her extremities. She can practically feel herself dripping, coming apart inside. Three limbs severed, but he gets stuck on the sinew in the beast’s right hind leg. He puts one foot on the beast’s back, then lifts the sword high over his head. A jolt of pleasure rocks her as he brings the sword down with blinding force, slicing cleanly through bone and gristle.

Why is he doing this? He does not need to take the beast apart, not for any reason she can guess. Maybe he is dispelling excess energy, excess anger. Victoria can understand that need, strong as the need currently coursing through her body. She leans forward, hand rocking hard against her mound, and her forehead hits the glass with a dull thump. She jerks back, surprised.

Suddenly Alfred’s head whips to the side. “Who’s there?” he snarls, voice like a thunderclap, strangely clear through the glass. No honey or gentleness in it at all. “Another beast, eh? Or a blood-addled hunter come to test their mettle? Well, you’ll find I’m no easy meat.” He licks his lips and raises the sword, black with blood in the shadowy courtyard.

Now he turns fully toward the window, and Victoria freezes, but it seems he can’t see her, not with the rain, not with the way the panes are tinted. He looks this way and that, tense. “Come out, you,” he growls. “I’ll hack you to pieces. I’ll cut your filthy rotten heart out. Man or woman, it matters not to me. If you aim to corrupt the holy ritual of the hunt, you’ll receive no mercy.” Who is this Alfred? Who is this monster? She doesn’t know.

And yet she finds she wants to know. Wants it badly. _Can I bring him out here, inside the church? Can I see him like this, face to face?_ She shakes her head. _Why? Why would I want to see that?_ Why indeed, but her cunt clenches harder around her as the thought hits her hot and fierce.

Alfred spends a few more seconds looking about, scouting for the source of the sound. Then he shrugs, whipping the sword in a bright silver arc through the air. “Too frightened after all, eh?” he huffs. The rain picks up, and he tips his head back, catching raindrops that carve thin white trails down his bloody face. “Oh, fine then. But just remember. When you choose to show yourself, I’ll be waiting.”

He laughs as he stretches, lifting the sword above his head and twisting left, then right. Stretching out the tension in his arms and back, she assumes. Twisting like that, moving side to side, she can see... oh by all the sweet gods, the butchery has made him hard.

It’s enough to send her over the edge. She plunges her fingers as deep into herself as she can go. She wants to take his length so badly, to touch it, taste it, guide it inside of her. His length... one plunging into her dripping wet hole, and the other, the sharper—a sword at her throat, slicing lightly into her skin, streams of blood running down between her breasts...

Yes, that is the Alfred she wants to see.

Victoria slumps forward as white-hot heat flashes out from her cunt, slamming through her like a bowstring snapping back, and she trembles through the jagged spike of pleasure. Her hand slows, the slick sound of thrusting growing ever fainter. Finally she stops, head against the cool window ledge, panting as the last waves of heat ebb away.

When she looks up again, Alfred is gone from the courtyard. Coming back inside? She panics, pulling her robe tight, unsure of what to do. It would not be strange for him to find her here, but then he would know she had seen him taking apart the beast. For some reason, she quails at that possibility. So she returns to her chambers, dashes some water on her face, and hops back into bed.

His voice echoes soft and close a few moments later.

“Victoria?” She is facing the wall, but she can hear him clearly. “Ah! Asleep, I see. Silly me, talking to myself.” He leans over her, and she can feel his hands pulling the blanket tighter. He is so near she can smell him, but she gives nothing away, chest rising slowly up and down. She can't see him; is he still covered in blood? She daren't look.

And then his breath hitches, like he’s noticed something. Victoria’s own breathing stops in response. What will he do? For a moment she thinks he’ll sink his teeth into her, eat her alive. She tenses under the blanket. He doesn’t notice. The world warps around her, turns red and black entire. All she can see is the wall, but she feels the change everywhere. Everywhere! Inside herself, swirling and twisting!

Reality is heavy and immediate for one sharp moment. Alfred exhales hot on her neck. Mouth open. _I am going to die_ , she thinks. _I am already dead. This is the same man I saw in the courtyard_. Then he sighs, says, “Sleep well, my dear,” and breaks the spell. All returns to normal. As he walks out of the room Victoria breathes again; his scent lingers. She blinks, and the wall before her is dull stone again.

She waits until his footsteps fade away into nothingness and she is left alone. Everything inside her squirms, alive and searching. She closes her eyes, yields to the force inside, and urges the smell of musk and blood to send her to sleep.


End file.
